So in the last few days, I've gotten spam emails from friends' hacked email accounts several times a day. Today I think I got 5 or 6. Yesterday it was about 3. I wake up every morning to spam emails from my friends, and then later in the day, I receive the mass email that they send out to everyone apologizing that their account was hacked and to delete the email they sent earlier.
Is everyone else receiving these too? What is going on? I can't find anything about it online.
16 comments:
I just started getting those today! I have no idea what's going on...
I've seen a bunch of stuff on Facebook from people all annoyed about it. Even received a text from a friend saying her husband's email was hacked and they were having all kinds of trouble and not to open anything from him. Thus far I haven't gotten any though!
I'm pretty sure it's just hotmail and msn. My junk account got hacked as well as my brother's and 3 other friends. All on hotmail.
I have gotten some-I don't know if it's just a Yahoo and a Hotmail thing or what. But it's definitely people that don't have Macs...
I'm usually just a lurker on this blog, but since I have some knowledge here I have to speak up. It's mostly a Yahoo and Hotmail thing; their servers are frequently scraped for account credentials and their users are (in general, being a less security-minded bunch) more likely to fall for phishing scams.
Also, what are these emails like? Are they by any chance describing the victim as being mugged in London needing some amount of money wired to them? If so, that's a 419 email (Google "advance fee fraud") and it's Nigerians sending those emails.
Also, for the person who mentioned Facebook, if you see people complaining about problems like this in the future, tell them to report it to Facebook, especially if it's one of those "mugged in London" scams above. The page they'd need for this "money transfer scam" situation is here:
http://www.facebook.com/help/#!/help/?page=1026
Sorry to butt in on the conversation, but seeing as how this stuff is my job, I couldn't resist. Cicada, I like your blog!
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=13231740
I don't know how to embed that but maybe it will be automatic. Some article on KSL about recent spam. I've only seen it on hotmail and msn.
Basically, my husband the IT guy says that it is really easy to hack anything. According to the article you don't even have to open the link to end up having junk sent from your account.
Jordan says avoiding the same password on all the media sites like twitter, facebook, email, etc can help avoid the invasion. Apparently, twitter has been hacked twice this year. And passwords really are easy to break if they don't have all those weird requirements like symbols, letters and numbers and such. Jordan has actually written code to break the easy ones for classes. He's starting to talk in the foreign language of IT now so I'm getting confused but yeah, crazy stuff.
Cicada, I've been getting them in my gmail account for a long time now. Exactly what you're describing. I don't open them and label them as spam.
I know Petra. She's cool. :)
I got three from my friend today who has a Yahoo account. Nothing else, though.
I find it funny.
DON'T CLICK ON WEIRD LINKS.
Don't know what a weird link is? Something that's sent to you from a friend and includes like 6 other people's random email addresses but they're all in alphabetical order. The link is just a link without commentary. If there is commentary, it's grammatically specious "i toally LOLLED!" "OMG chexk out thia hahahahaha" especially if the friend that sent it to you doesn't send you crap like that. If the link itself looks ridiculous. "http://thislink.is.from.china.aun.mx.fun.er.ted"
And use GMAIL.
Those Nigerians ...
I've noticed it has also started occurring with gmail unforunately.
I just got a whack of spam from Auntie N today. And so did Dad. She is a yahoo user.
:-(
Don't click on weird links.
Don't install random search bars on your web browser that might also be recording your keystrokes and sending it back to somebody.
Change your password at regular intervals.
And whatever you do, don't wire any money to the Nigerians.
YES! I've been getting loads of those. I don't want to mark them as spam, since those friends of mine are friends, not spammers!
Chris was telling me that this is an epidemic, caused by new spamware. It happened to him & got halfway down his contact list before he realized & changed his password. Anyway, a lot of these emails are .exe links, meaning it'd install something on your computer. I feel so sorry for the person who unknowingly clicks on one of those links!
I heard that if you click on the link, your computer is hijacked and starts running some program you don't control in the background. So I don't think changing the password is going to solve the whole problem.
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